Before 2014, one of my main hobbies was working on a website designed to provide free educational materials to U.S. home-school families. Now that I'm no longer designing a trading system, I'm beginning to once again spend more and more time engaged in this prior interest and will find it convenient to record some of my ideas here as they occur to me. For example, I think the following video would make a great resource to include in a course teaching students how to evaluate information critically...
Why Is It So Hard for Atheists to Get Voted in to Congress? A Good Question That Deserves a Good Answer From a Podcast by Dr. Albert Mohler Thursday, November 12, 2020 Philip Zuckerman asked a very interesting question at Religion News Service. "Why is it so hard for atheists to get elected to Congress?" Now, Phil Zuckerman has been studying this kind of issue for a long time. He is Professor of Sociology and Secular Studies at Pitzer College in California. He has been looking at the science and sociology of atheism for a very long time. He is after all the establishment of the first major program in secular studies in any American college or university. He asks a question, it's a good question. "Why is it so hard for atheists to get elected to Congress?" He begins by writing this, "This year, the selection of Kamala Harris as Joe Biden's running mate presented the US with its first politician of Indian heritage and its first black woman to be on a major party ticket." Now, of course, that followed by four years, Hillary Clinton becoming the first woman to win a major party presidential nomination. Meanwhile, he writes, "Pete Buttigieg became the first openly gay candidate to win a presidential primary. Ted Cruz became the first Latino to win a presidential primary. And of course you've had the first Jewish American winner primary that is Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders." And then Zuckerman goes on to say that, "At least two women have been elected as the first Muslim women elected to Congress." He then writes this, quote, "But in this era of increasing diversity in the breaking of long rigid political demographic barriers, there is no self-identifying atheist in national politics." "Indeed," he writes, "throughout history, only one self-identified atheists in the US Congress comes to mind, the late California Democrat, Peter Stark." It's also notable that Pete stark identified as an atheist only toward the end of his congressional career. Phil's Zuckerman's asking a very interesting question. Why is it that it is so hard for atheists to get voted into Congress? Evidently there are those elected to Congress who are Muslims and of course even winning presidential primaries who are Latino and Buddhist and even openly gay. But Zuckerman's asking this specific question about atheists, where are the atheists and why is it that there is no openly identified atheist in the United States Congress? Now that's a very interesting question for a number of reasons. One of them is that asking about members of Congress means people who got elected. They were successful in running political campaigns. They were elected by the people of the district. That's different than being selected by a committee or appointed by a president. That means this question really does point to the worldview of voters. Why is it the voters, even in very secular, very liberal portions of the United States don't or at least haven't elected atheists? There's not a single atheist lined to be a member of the 117th Congress. Later in the article, he writes, "This puts the country at odds with democracies the world over that have elected openly godless or at least openly skeptical leaders who went on to become revered national figures." He then goes on to identify nations such as India, Sweden, Uruguay, Israel, and New Zealand as indicative of democracies that have elected to very high office those who are publicly identified as either agnostics or atheists. In some case, outright atheists. He then goes on, "But in the United States, self-identified non-believers are at a distinct disadvantage. A 2019 poll asking Americans who they were willing to vote for in a hypothetical presidential election found that 96% would vote for a candidate who is black, 94% for a woman, 95% for an Hispanic candidate, 93% for a Jewish candidate, 76% said they would vote for a gay or lesbian candidate. Even 66% said they would vote for a Muslim candidate. But at the very bottom of the list is an atheist candidate down to 60%." That is a sizeable chunk who would not vote for a candidate simply on the basis of the candidates non-religion. So as a scholar and researcher working on this kind of question for a long time, Phil Zuckerman then says, "There appears to be two primary reasons atheism remains," what he calls, "the kiss of death for aspiring politicians." "One," he says, "is rooted in a reaction to historical and political events, while the other is rooted in baseless bigotry." Very interesting. He has a hypothesis. The hypothesis has two parts. He says, "The first reason why it is unlikely that atheists would get elected in the United States to this kind of office is because," he says, "atheism has a branding problem." And there's some intellectual honesty here. He says, "The branding problem has a great deal to do with regimes such as Stalin's Soviet Union and Pol Pot's Cambodia." Both of which he acknowledges were explicitly atheistic. He goes on to say that, "Fundamental to their oppressive agendas was bulldozing humans and persecuting religious believers." Talk about a branding problem for atheists, but he basically wants to argue that in the past. It really isn't all that relevant, but it still remains a branding problem. But then he goes on to explain what he sees as the second reason, and in worldview analysis, this one's a lot more interesting to us. He writes, "The second reason atheists find it hard to get elected in America is the result of an irrational linkage in many people's minds between atheism and immorality." He goes on, "Some assume that because atheists don't believe in a deity watching and judging their every move, they must be more likely to murder, steal, lie and cheat. One recent study," he says, "for example, found that Americans even intuitively link atheism with necro-beastiality and cannibalism," end quote. He presses his case, "Such bigoted associations between atheism and immorality do not align with reality. There is," he argues, "simply no empirical evidence that most people who lack a belief in God are immoral. If anything," he says, "the evidence points in the other direction." He does see some hope out there for non-believers however. He says, "Although the rivers of anti-atheism run deep throughout the American political landscape, they are starting to thin. More and more non-believers are openly expressing their godlessness and swelling numbers of Americans are becoming secular." He goes on to cite that in 2018, a new group emerged in Washington own as the Congressional Freethought Caucus. He goes on to say, "Although it has only 13 members, it portends a significant shift in which some elected members of Congress are no longer afraid of being identified as at the very least agnostic." Well, whether or not that group portends anything of the like remains to be seen. But the most interesting part of this article is the question that professors are coming to asks. Why is it indeed that it is so hard for atheists to get elected to Congress? He goes on, remember those two reasons he put forward? Number one, the branding problem of atheism with repressive regimes, murderous regime, such as Pol Pot's Cambodia and Stalin's Soviet Union. But as I said, it's the second of his reasons that turns out to be far more interesting. He says that, "Americans are making a category error. They're exercising a certain kind of bigotry and making the judgment that if one is an atheist, one has no substantial morality, and thus one is not to be trusted with high office." Now let's just think about this for a moment. Is it possible that one could know an atheist or indeed many atheists who actually do live very moral lives? Is it possible as a matter of fact, and Christians should ask this question openly, is it possible that we would have say in our own city some atheists who would live lives of greater nobility than some who would identify as religious believers? And here's where we have to answer yes, it is quite possible. As a matter of fact, even the early church dealt with the fact that there were many Romans, those who were based in a classical pagan culture who lived what would be recognized as noble lives. But the problem is even the early Christians understood is that that nobility would crack apart once it was no longer a part of the reinforced culture, and that is exactly what happened. But coming back to our own time and our own hypothetical city where there could be some noble atheists living amongst some fairly scandalous religious believers. The fact is that that is not the major issue. The Christian worldview tells us that the major issue here is understanding that if indeed one is a consistent atheist, then one has no objective morality at all, or at least no basis or foundation for objective moral judgment. Because if you are an atheist, you deny that the creation has any order or any particular meaning and certainly isn't embedded with any moral laws. Instead, all you have is a naturalistic materialistic universe that just happens to work this way. There are some very brave atheists or non-believing thinkers who've been honest enough to say that the best that can be said about morality from a consistently atheistic viewpoint is that we should live as if there is a greater substance to moral principles than the atheist worldview can explain. As a matter of fact, those same consistently atheistic thinkers demonstrating true intellectual courage have to admit that even ascribing any kind of meaning to life is artificial in a truly atheistic scheme. Instead, one could only say that it's more convenient and palatable to live as if we actually live meaningful lives, even though the worldview of the consistent naturalist materialist atheist is that there can be no ultimate lasting transcendent meaning to anything. But let's go back to Zuckerman's second point because he actually uses the word bigotry. Indeed, he says, "It is baseless bigotry." But is it? Well, it would be bigotry if we said that it's impossible on an individual basis for a person to live out what we would consider to be the right moral principles, even as undercutting those principles with one's own worldview. That's possible. Actually it is possible to find a noble pagan, and we should be thankful for that. Here's something else that the Christian worldview helps us to understand, that noble pagan, by that very nobility, that is uprightness of character. Doesn't cheat, doesn't steal, doesn't embezzle, doesn't lie, doesn't cheat on his wife. That's all important. That is noble. But here's where we understand that the very structure of making that moral judgment actually undercuts the atheistic worldview. We're using a very independent, even transcendent judgment, even about what nobility is. And secondly, there's another issue. Why is that noble pagan, noble? Well, here's where Christians would explain, it is because even as that atheist may deny it, does deny it, that atheist is made in the image of God. There is a conscience, a moral consciousness, an embedded the law that is there, even if its ultimate source is denied by the one who exercises it. But here's another issue. If indeed Americans have demonstrated themselves, ourselves to be quite reluctant to elect atheists to office, even if it is because there is a prejudice or a bigotry against atheists, that just might be based upon a deeper moral instinct than making a judgment about even an individual. It might well have to do with the fact that Americans, whether they consciously say it out loud, understand that in electing someone to office, we are electing not only a person, but a worldview. And it's the worldview that is more ominous perhaps then even the person. Or you could put it another way, you might be able to absorb a certain handful of unbelievers or atheists in a body like the United States Congress without making a lot of difference. But if that worldview were to predominate, well, you'd be looking at a radically different institution, producing radically different laws for a radically different nation.
Why is the United States Congress Comprised of Two Bodies? As explained in a podcast by Dr. Albert Mohler on Friday, November 13, 2020 When you look at the United States Senate, our founders in the constitutional order created in the legislature, two different chambers, a lower chamber known as the House of Representatives and a higher or upper chamber known as the United States Senate. Now, as you think of the word Senate, remember that it goes all the way back to classical antiquity. It goes back to the Roman Republic. The Senate was always and remains a very elite legislative body that has often been referred to as the most exclusive club in the world, with right now by the constitution, with 50 states, only 100 members out of a country of 330 million people, that makes the Senate a very rarefied chamber indeed. The 435 seats currently apportioned in the United States House of Representatives create the lower chamber, and by our constitutional order, that is where budgetary and financial initiatives must begin, but nothing can happen in legislation without passage in both of the chambers. And our founders understood something very, very important as they were considering the two chamber system. After all, as you look to Britain, there are two different houses. There's a House of Commons and the House of Lords, and learning from that, although not exactly replicating that, the American founders understood that the commons or the House of Representatives could be where political passions could run most high. There needed to be something like the Senate, described by one of our founders, as the cooling saucer. Just think about pouring hot coffee into a saucer in order for it to cool. The deliberative, very tradition-bound Senate and elite body of legislators was intended to be a break on what could be out of control democratic instincts, democratic here with a little "d".